FATHER
My mother told us our father was a god, but I think he was a man. A man who left us to perform great deeds and become a hero. But he left Otrera with Hippolyta and myself, and we thought little of him after that.
The soft sand beneath my feet, hot in the summer sunlight, filled my childhood. I ran with Hippolyta everywhere—fleeter than hares we were, chasing each other across our island home. Other women lived there too, some with children, some too old for it, but they all looked to Otrera for guidance. She had come from the western cities and knew how to run a community such as ours. And she was brave and fierce and strong, and so they looked at her almost as I did, like a great queen, though a queen of one small island only. We had no citadel nor large estate to call our own, only the small fields that fed us, the trees that shaded us, and the spring that slaked our thirst.
When I was but small, a man came to our island. He was not fearsome or warlike, only an older man with a limp and sadness in his brown eyes. His small boat slid upon our shores as I watched from a perch among the trees. The man climbed out, splashing awkwardly in the shallows, and heaved his boat further up the beach. Then he turned and headed straight for my mother’s cabin. On his back was a large satchel which protruded in all manner of odd angles. Silently, I climbed down from my tree and followed the man, always staying back enough so he would not notice me.
“Rastor!” exclaimed my mother, rising from her work. She rushed out of our small home and met the man in the patch of garden just beyond the door.
For some reason, I hung back from them. I wanted to learn this man’s purpose and thought my mother and he might conceal it if I made my presence known. So I stayed back, crouched in the shrubs on the far end of the garden.
The man, Rastor, returned my mother’s greeting but not the cheerfulness of it. Instead, he sank to his knees in the dirt before Otrera.
“He’s dead, my lady,” was all Rastor said.
My mother, who I had seen cry over an injured sparrow but never a man, bit her lip and closed her eyes. Was she keeping back tears? Were tears meant to be chained like that?
After a moment, Rastor said, “I’m sorry.” Then he brought out the satchel I had spied and laid it at my mother’s feet. “These are his things.” Together, they sat in the garden and arranged my dead father’s possessions around them like children with their toys. Here was a sword wrapped in a shining bronze and leather sheath. A belt of woven gold. And the helmet. That was my favorite of all the riches Rastor brought us that day. It was a bronze cap with two metal segments that reached down the wearer’s cheeks. A crest of red erupted from the crown like a tail. Had my father fought in this helmet? I wondered, cheeks turning red with excitement. Had he fallen honorably on the field of battle with this wondrous mane atop his noble brow?
Rastor also gave my mother several purses of coins as well as a handful of religious sigils. We had little use for gods other than our Moon Goddess here, but my mother thanked him all the same. She offered to let him stay the night in our home, but Rastor declined. Apparently, our island of women was not something he wanted to experience first-hand, and he said his good-byes and hurried back to his small boat and the wide sea and lands beyond.
After he left the garden, I rose from my hiding place and strode up to my mother. Tall for my age, I had to look down at her where she sat surrounded by my father’s leavings. Tears glazed her eyes, but when she saw me, she gave a startled gasp.
“What was his name?” I asked. I could not mourn someone I’d never known, so no tears rolled down my cheeks.
My mother shook her head at my question, then looked anxiously about for my sister. “Do not speak of this,” she said, her voice more tense and sad than I’d ever heard before. “Not to your sister. Please.” She had never pleaded for anything of me. I did not understand at the time.
I plopped myself into the grass with her, my greedy hands reaching past the golden belt and the discarded amulets for the great bronze helmet. “Why not?” I said. The helmet was heavy in my small, childish hands.
Otrera took the helmet from my hands gently. “Your father was not a man,” she said, firm now. I think she was trying to convince herself as much as me. “Your father was a god. He was the God of War. His godly blood flows in your veins, my dearest, yours and your sister’s. That is why you are so strong and why you fight like fierce little mountain cats.” She set aside the helmet then to tickle me, and I laughed and screamed and forgot all about the man from the sea and his strange gifts and stories.
Hippolyta ran home that evening, brighter than the sun, golden-brown hair streaming behind herself in wild tangles, both knees skinned but with a gap-toothed grin on her face. My mother shot me a stern look when she skipped through the doorway, but I said nothing, waiting for Otrera to speak. Once Hippolyta settled, and we all supped heartily, mother brought all the presents from the limping man.
“Lyta,” she said, facing first my sister, then me, “Pen. Neither of you have met your father, but today he has looked down on us from Olympos to give us divine gifts.” I kept my mouth closed. I knew very well that the limping man had been sent by no divinity, but I also knew my mother never lied to us. “The gods have blessed us.” She brought out the helmet and the sword, the belt and the amulets. Hippolyta’s eyes grew wide as saucers. In the firelight of our small home, the armor and weapons gleamed gold and bright. Again, my gaze strayed to the helmet, and I saw Hippolyta turn to the elegantly woven belt. She wiped her hands upon her shift before reaching for the golden plaits.
“Mother, it’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. Her voice was filled with awe.
I picked up the helmet, and the division of “godly gifts” was done. The sword stayed with our mother. She spent the night regaling us with stories of the gods, how they loved humans like herself on occasion, how they could rage at each other and throw the heavens into deadly combat, how they created things we took for granted, trees, grass, fire. I, the younger of the children, fell into a haze of sleep and myth while Hippolyta asked my mother question after question about the gods who had made us, all the while clutching the golden belt in her grubby hands.
The island on which we lived was not small; certainly, it was larger than our small community needed, and there were many parts that we did not often go. One such region, a dense region of trees and ferns, was where Hippolyta and I found ourselves soon after the visit from Rastor. Hippolyta led the way as she always did, dodging through the tree limbs and nimbly leaping over twisting roots. Neither one of us had any chores that day and was not expected back home until much later.
“Look!” cried Hippolyta from ahead. I threw down the flower in my hand and followed her pointed finger. She had found a small gully, probably once a stream that had since dried out. The gully was mostly clear of trees and deadfalls, so we clambered down into it and continued our hike through its sandy discourse. Lyta was carrying on about something that only she understood when suddenly there was a tinge in the air.
I whistled for her to stop, and we both froze. I sniffed the air at the unfamiliar coppery, foul smell wafting towards us. At my side, Hippolyta tensed, smelling what I smelled. Ahead, the gully curved around a tall rock formation. With hesitating steps, we made our way up to the bend in the path. At the rock, we stopped again and strained our ears, but there was nothing but the sound of far-off ducks conversing noisily and the wind as it tossed through the tree canopy. I signaled for Hippolyta to stay behind me, and we two leaned out from behind the rock.
Just beyond the curve lay a shocking figure. It was the body of a man, his legs twisted awkwardly under himself, arms splayed out at his sides. My sister and I both gasped, but the man did not move. In fact, his chest did not even rise and fall with breath. He was dead. We came closer and saw why. His leather cuirass had been torn straight through, past flesh and down to the bone in several places. He looked to have tried to defend himself as his forearms were similarly shredded. One hand still clutched a short dagger, which was coated in blood. A cap of leather had tumbled from his head and lay discarded a few paces away. When we got closer, we saw his face had gone purple and green from the summer heat, bloating in spots like a balloon. His skin, whatever shade it had been in life, was unrecognizable now. The dead leaves and dirt under his body were soaked through with the dried brown of his lifeblood.
Hippolyta drew away from me and stared into his mottled, rotting face. I turned from it in disgust. The man’s blade came into view, and I bent down to pry it from his fingers. Blood had dried along the sword’s edge, coating the crosspiece. I turned it over and found a tuft of fur stuck amid the dried blood. This seemed significant, and I determined then to show it to mother.
I looked over my shoulder at my sister and found her still staring at the corpse’s hideous visage. “Come,” I said. “We must tell Mother of this.” She nodded, but did not look up, so strangely focused on the man’s face. Something in her gaze put fear in me, for I had never seen her look so at another being before. What was it she saw in the dead man? Why did she not wish to turn away from so awful a sight?
At last, with a tug of her hand and a nervous whimper, I was able to turn her from the corpse, and we scampered back towards Mother, towards our village, away from unblinking death and scattered remains.
Mother’s eyes flared like flames when we told her breathlessly what we had seen in the woods. A man, firstly, one armed and sneaking across our island. Secondly, some other hunter, perhaps not human, and one that could shred armor like so much parchment. She gathered together the women of the island and had us recount our tale. I showed them the man’s dagger with blood and fur on it. Many of them agreed with Otrera and discussed sending out scouts to the uninhabited portions of the island the following day while planning to set bonfires and torches near their homes to keep away intruders in the night.
Only one woman scoffed at our worries. Agathe was her name. She had once lived in the cities with men, only coming to our island after falling pregnant without a husband. Our island had no use for weddings or husbands, and so she had fled to us when her father and mother threw her out of their home and threatened to beat her. Poor Agathe was still young, her infant son still feeding from her breast, and she did not know truly the wild ways of the world out here. We may have been safe from angry fathers, but there were more concerns in the world than that. But Agathe did not fear the mysterious threat like the others, and no strong words or invocations of our Moon Goddess from my mother could convince her otherwise.
So at nightfall, when each of us returned to our homes and set fire to blazes at our doors and kept any weapons close at hand, Agathe fed her babe and slipped off to sleep in her home at the edge of our settlement without lighting a single torch.
Throughout the night, my dreams disturbed me, and I found comfort in wrapping my small fingers around the curved edges of my father’s bronze helmet. Sometimes I woke and would notice my mother sitting between me and my sister, her hands on the sword Rastor had given her. I did not know yet how well she could handle such a blade. But though my mother sat ready to defend us with her life, no threat came knocking at our door that night. When finally the sun rose and we stepped into the garden, I sighed. Surely if our home had been ignored in the night, so must all the others’ homes have been.
But I was wrong.
Agathe, from the other end of the village, let up a cry such as I had never heard before. Before she could go on, her own anguish strangled the sound. My mother rushed over, through our garden and the intervening woods, past the other homes, to where Agathe knelt before her own cottage. I raced after my mother, Hippolyta, my fleet-footed shadow, as always.
“Agathe,” said Otrera, kneeling beside the other woman. Women from other homes filtered over to see why she had cried out so. “Agathe, what is wrong?”
Agathe held up a torn bit of blanket, soaked through with blood.
“My son!” she cried, her voice already hoarse. “My son!”